Trechos de Out Of My Life (1920), de Paul von Hindenburg.
And now the war was upon us. [...]
At three o'clock in the afternoon of August 22 I received an inquiry from the Headquarters of His Majesty the Emperor as to whether I was prepared for immediate employment.
My answer ran: "I am ready."
- - -
In the pocket-book of a dead Russian officer a note had been found which revealed the intention of the enemy Command.
[...] The Russians were thus planning a concentric attack against the 8th Army, but Samsonoff's Army now already extended farther west than was originally intended.
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These men of the 17th Corps and 1st Reserve Corps as well as the Landwehr and Landsturm also had behind them everything which made life worth living.
We had not merely to win a victory over Samsonoff. We had to annihilate him. Only thus could we get a free hand to deal with the second enemy, Rennenkampf, who was even then plundering and burning East Prussia. Only thus could we really and completely free our old Prussian land and be in a position to do something else which was expected of us - intervene in the mighty battle for a decision which was raging between Russia and our Austro-Hungarian Ally in Galicia and Poland. If this first blow were not final the danger for our Homeland would become like a lingering disease, the burnings and murders in East Prussia would remain unavenged, and our Allies in the south would wait for us in vain.
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On our way from Marienburg to Tannenberg the impression of the miseries into which war had plunged the unhappy inhabitants were intensified. Masses of helpless refugees, carrying their belongings, pressed past me on the road and to a certain extent hindered the movements of our troops which were hastening to meet the foe.
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It was only against the Cossacks that our men could not contain their rage. They were considered the authors of all the bestial brutalities under which the people and country of East Prussia had suffered so cruelly.
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In our new Headquarters at Allenstein I entered the church, close by the old castle of the Teutonic Knights, while divine service was being held.
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This first evacuation had left behind remarkable traces of Russian semi-civilisation. The heady odours of scent, leather and cigarettes were not able to cover the odour of other things.
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There is a certain book, 'Vom Kriege,' which never grows old. Its author is Clausewitz. He knew war, and he knew men. We had to listen to him, and whenever we followed him it was to victory. To do otherwise meant disaster. He gave a warning about the encroachment of politics on the conduct of military operations.
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The achievements of Germany and the German Army in the year 1914 will only be appreciated in all their heroic greatness when truth and justice have free play once more, when our enemies' attempt to mislead world opinion by propaganda is unmasked.
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The numbers and resources of our other foes had in the meantime reached giant proportions, and in the circle of their armies Russia's place had been taken by America, with her youthful energies and mighty economic powers!
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On our part of the Eastern Front fighting was resumed with the greatest violence. It had never completely died down. With us, however, it did not rage with quite the same fury as in the Carpathians, where the Austro-Hungarian armies in a desperate struggle had to protect the fields of Hungary from the Russian floods.
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One thing we noticed was that before the surrender the Russians had shot their horses wholesale, obviously as a result of their conviction of the extraordinary importance which these animals had for our operations in the East.
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The tide turned, and our cavalry division had to withdraw again. The railway into the heart of the country was open to the Russians once more. We had come too late and were now exhausted!
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In April, 1916, I celebrated at Kovno the fiftieth anniversary of my entry into the Service.
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There was something unsatisfactory about the final result of the operations and encounters of this year [1915]. The Russian bear had escaped our clutches, bleeding no doubt from more than one wound, but still not stricken to death.
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Activity was uncommonly lively in the enemy's back areas. Deserters complained of the iron discipline to which the divisions drawn from the lines were subjected, for the troops were being drilled with drastic severity.
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If our Medical Services had not remained at the level they actually reached we should not, on this account alone, have been able to carry on the war so long. Some day, when all the material available has been scientifically worked through, the achievements of our Medical Services will be revealed as a glorious testimony to German industry and devotion for a great purpose. Let us hope they will then be made available for common humanity.
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"Verdun"! The name was continually on our lips in the East from the beginning of February in this year. [...] With Verdun in our hands our position on the Western Front would be materially strengthened.
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The French and English, in very superior numbers, had hurled themselves at our relatively weak line on both sides of the Somme and pressed the defence back. Indeed, for a moment we were faced with the menace of a complete collapse!
- - -
I put down the receiver and thought of Verdun and Italy, Brussiloff and the Austrian Eastern Front; then of the news, "Rumania has declared war on us." Strong nerves would be required!
- - -
In view of the collapse on the Galician front, the Austro-Hungarian offensive in the southern Tyrol had had to be abandoned. The Italians, in reply, had themselves passed to the offensive on the Isonzo front. These battles made a very heavy drain on the Austro-Hungarian armies, which were fighting against great superiority.
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Lastly, the position in the Balkans at this moment was of importance to the whole situation and the emergencies of the times. The offensive on which, at our suggestion, the Bulgarians had embarked against Sarrail in Macedonia had had to be broken off after gaining preliminary successes. The political objective which was associated with this offensive - to keep Rumania from entering the war - had not been reached.
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A new army, composed of Bulgarian, Turkish and German units, was being concentrated on the Bulgarian side of the Dobrudja frontier and farther up the Danube. It had about seven divisions of very different strengths.
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Further, the consumption of ammunition and material in the long and immense battles on all fronts had become so enormous that the danger that our operations might be paralysed from this cause alone was not excluded.
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The domestic circumstances of Austria-Hungary had changed for the worse during the summer of 1916.
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The Turkish Empire had entered the war without any ambitions for the extension of her political power. Her leading men, particularly Enver Pasha, had clearly recognised that there could be no neutrality for Turkey in the war which had broken out. It could not, in fact, be imagined that in the long run Russia and the Western Powers would continue to heed the moderating influences with regard to the use of the Straits. For Turkey her entry into the war was a question of to be or not to be, far more than for us others. Our enemies were obliging enough to proclaim this far and wide at the very start.
- - -
We sent material even to the Senussi on the north coast of Africa. These we supplied principally with rifles and small arm ammunition, with the help of our U-boats. Though these deliveries were but small, they had an extraordinarily rousing effect on the war spirit among the Mohammedan tribes. Hitherto we have not been able to appreciate the practical advantages of their operations to our cause.
- - -
It was while we were in residence at Pless that the Emperor Francis Joseph died. Both for the Danube Monarchy and ourselves his death was a loss, the full and impressive import of which was only to be appreciated later. There was no doubt that with his death the ideal bond of union between the various nationalities of the Dual Monarchy was lost. With the venerable white-haired Emperor a large part of the national conscience of the conglomerate Empire sank for ever into the grave.
- - -
Disaster now overtook Rumania because her army did not march, her military leaders had no understanding, and at long last we succeeded in concentrating sufficient forces in Transylvania before it was too late.
- - -
The situation in Irak at this time was better. For the moment the English had not yet made sufficient progress with their communications to be able to embark on an offensive to revenge Kut-el-Amara.
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The third Asiatic theatre, Southern Palestine, gave cause for immediate anxiety. The second Turkish attempt on the Suez Canal had been defeated in August, 1916, in the heart of the northern part of the Sinai peninsula. Following on this occurrence, the Turkish troops had gradually been withdrawn from this region and were now in the neighbourhood of Gaza, on the southern frontier of Palestine.
- - -
There was a great deal of interest in many German circles in these regions. Without saying as much, the thoughts of these gentlemen were probably straying beyond Mesopotamia to Persia, Afghanistan and India, and beyond Syria to Egypt. With their fingers on the map men dreamed that by these routes we could reach the spinal cord of British world power, our greatest peril.
- - -
It was not until December that the actions at Verdun died down. From the end of August the Somme battle too had taken on the character of an extremely fierce and purely frontal contest of the forces on both sides. The task of Main Headquarters was essentially limited to feeding the armies with the reinforcements necessary to enable them to maintain their resistance. Among us battles of this kind were known as "battles of material." From the point of view of the attacker they might also be called "battering-ram tactics," for the commanders had no higher ideal. The mechanical, material elements of the battle were put in the foreground, while real generalship was far too much in the background.
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If our western adversaries failed to obtain any decisive results in the battles from 1915 to 1917 it must mainly be ascribed to a certain unimaginativeness in their generalship. The necessary superiority in men, war material and ammunition was certainly not lacking, nor can it be suggested that the quality of the enemy troops would not have been high enough to satisfy the demands of a more vigorous and ingenious leadership. Moreover, in view of the highly-developed railway and road system, and the enormous amount of transport at their disposal, our enemies in the West had free scope for far greater strategic subtlety. However, the enemy commander did not make full use of these possibilities, and our long resistance was to be attributed, apart from other things, to a certain barrenness of the soil in which the enemy's plans took root. But notwithstanding all this, the demands which had to be made on our commanders and troops on this battlefield remained enormous.
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In my view, war with America was inevitable at the end of January, 1917. At that time Wilson knew of our intention to start unrestricted U-boat warfare on February 1. There can be no doubt that, thanks to the English practice of intercepting and deciphering our telegrams on this subject to the German Ambassador in Washington, Wilson was as well informed about this matter as about the contents of all our other cables.
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In 1914 the Belgian Army had escaped from Antwerp and was now facing us, though practically inactive, and thus imposing on us a certain wastage which was not unimportant. Our experiences with the Serbian Army in 1915 had been only superficially better for us. It had avoided our enveloping movements, though its condition was very pitiful. In the summer of 1916 it reappeared, once more in fighting trim, in the Macedonian theatre, and its units were being continually reinforced and increased from all kinds of countries, of late more particularly by Austro-Hungarian deserters of Slav nationality.
- - -
Think of seventy million human beings living in semi-starvation, thousands of them slowly succumbing to its effects! Think of all the babies in arms who perished because their mothers starved! Think of all the children who were left sick and weakly for life! And this was not in distant India or China, where a stony-hearted, pitiless Nature had refused her blessed rain, but here, in the very centre of Europe, the home of culture and humanity! A semi-starvation which was the work of the decrees and power of men who were wont to glory in their civilisation! Where is the civilisation in that? Do these men stand any higher than those others who shocked the whole civilised world by their savagery against non-combatants in the highlands of Armenia and there came to a miserable end in thousands as a punishment of Fate? No other voice than that of vengeance, certainly not that of pity, has ever spoken to the rough Anatolian peasant.
What was the object of these decrees of the champions of "civilisation"? Their plan was clear. They had seen that their military power would never enable them to realise their tyrannical ambitions, that their methods of warfare were useless against their adversary with his nerves of steel. They would therefore destroy those nerves. If it could not be done in battle, man to man, it might be done from behind, by finding a way through the Homeland. They would let the wives and children starve! "With God's help," that would have its effect on the husbands and fathers at the front, perhaps not at once, but certainly by degrees! Perhaps it would compel those husbands and fathers to throw down their arms, for otherwise the menace of death would hover over their wives and children; the death - of civilisation. There were men who reasoned thus, and indeed prayed thus.
Our enemies are hurling American shells at us. Why do we not sink the ships in which they come? Have we not the means to do so? A question of right? Where and when has our enemy ever thought about right?
- - -
The battles of Arras, Soissons and Rheims raged on for weeks. It revealed only one tactical variation from the conflict on the Somme in the previous year.
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Russia in revolution! How often had men with a real or pretended knowledge of the country announced that this event was at hand? I had ceased to believe in it. Now that it had materialised, it aroused in me no feeling of political satisfaction, but rather a sense of military relief.
- - -
The English attack at Cambrai for the first time revealed the possibilities of a great surprise attack with tanks. We had had previous experience of this weapon in the spring offensive, when it had not made any particular impression. However, the fact that the tanks had now been raised to such a pitch of technical perfection that they could cross our undamaged trenches and obstacles did not fail to have a marked effect on our troops. The physical effects of fire from machine-guns and light ordnance with which the steel Colossus was provided were far less destructive than the moral effect of its comparative invulnerability. The infantryman felt that he could do practically nothing against its armoured sides. As soon as the machine broke through our trench-lines, the defender felt himself threatened in the rear and left his post.
I had no doubt that though our men had had to put up with quite enough already in the defence, they would get on level terms even with this new hostile weapon, and that our technical skill would soon provide the means of fighting tanks, and, moreover, in that mobile form which was so necessary.
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With the appearance of the Americans on the battlefield the hopes which the French and English had so long cherished were at length fulfilled.
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The homeland collapsed sooner than the Army. In these circumstances we were unable to offer any real resistance to the ever-increasing pressure of the President of the United States.
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Stamboul was not destined to fall by some mighty deed of heroism or impressive manifestation of military power.
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The political structure of Austria-Hungary went to pieces at the same time as her military organisation. She not only abandoned her own frontiers, but deserted ours as well.
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The Revolution was now in full career, and it was purely by chance that the general escaped the clutches of the revolutionaries on his way back to Headquarters.
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The visible sign of the victory of the new powers was the overthrow of the Throne. The German Imperial House also fell.
- - -
Like Siegfried, stricken down by the treacherous spear of savage Hagan, our weary front collapsed. It was in vain that it had tried to drink in new vitality from that fountain in our homeland which had run dry. It was now our task to save what was left of our army for the subsequent reconstruction of our Fatherland. The present was lost.
Trechos de Goodbye To All That (1929), de Robert Graves.
I find it most inconvenient to be born into the age of the internal-combustion engine and the electric dynamo and to have no sympathy with them: a bycicle, a Primus stove, and a army rifle mark the bounds of my mechanical capacity.
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Marching on cobble roads is difficult, so when a staff-officer came by in a Rolls-Royce and cursed us for bad march-discipline, I felt like throwing something at him. Trench soldiers hate the staff and the staff know it.
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The few old hands who went through the last show infect the new men with pessimism; they don't believe in the War, they don't believe in the staff. But at least they would follow their officers anywhere, because the officers happen to be a decent lot. They look forward to a battle because that gives them more chances of a cushy one in the legs or arms than trench warfare. In trench warfare the proportion of head wounds is much greater.
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My remaining trench service with the Second Battalion that autumn proved uneventful; I found no excitement in patrolling, no horror in the continual experience of death.
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[A peasant] gave me a vegetarian pamphlet entitled Comment Vivre Cent Ans. (We already knew of the coming Somme offensive, so this seemed a good joke.)
- - -
I used to get big bunches of Canadians to drill: four or five hundred at a time. Spokesmen stepped forward and asked what sense there was in sloping an ordering arms, and fixing and unfixing bayonets. They said they had come across to fight, and not to guard Buckingham Palace.
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Patriotism, in the trenches, was too remote a sentiment, and at once rejected as fit only for civilians, or prisioners. A new arrival who talked patriotism would soon be told to cut if out.
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The troops, while ready to believe in the Kaiser as a comic personal devil, knew the German soldier to be, on the whole, more devout than themselves. In the instructors' mess, we spoke freely of God and Gott as opposed tribal deities.
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Jovial Father Gleeson of the Munsters, when all the officers were killed or wounded at the first battle of Ypres, had stripped off his black badges and, taking command of the survivors, held the line.
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Our great trial was the German canister. A two-gallon drum with a cylinder inside containing about two pounds of an explosive called ammonal that looked like salmon paste, smelled like marzipan and, when it went off, sounded like the Day of Judgement.
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Not wanting to face a religious argument, I decided to humour my parents; if they believed that God stood squarely behind the British Expeditionary Force, it would be unkind to dissent.
I smelt no rat, beyond a slight suspicion that they were anxious to show me off in church wearing my battle-stained officer's uniform.
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Lloyd George was up in the air on one of his "glory of the Welsh hills" speeches. The power of his rhetoric amazed me. The substance of the speech might be commonplace, iddle and false, but I had to fight hard against abandoning myself with the rest of his audience.
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The militia majors, for the most part country gentlemen with estates in Wales and no thoughts in peacetime beyond hunting, shooting, fishing, and the control of their tenantry.
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The number of dead horses and mules shocked me; human corpses were all very well, but it seemed wrong for animals to be dragged into the war like this.
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I was still superstitious about looting or collecting souvernirs. "These greatcoats are only a loan," I told myself.
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Being now off duty, I fell asleep in the trench without waiting for the bombardment to stop. It would be no worse getting killed asleep than awake.
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Divisions could be always be trusted to sending a warning about verdigris or vermorel-sprayers, or the keeping of pets in trenches, or being polite to our allies, or some other triviality, exactly when an attack was in progress.
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My copy of Nietzsche's poems, by the way, had contributed to the suspicions of my spying activities. Nietzsche, execrated in the newspapers as the philosopher of German militarism, was more properly interpreted as a William le Queux mistery-man - the sinister figure behind the Kaiser.
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The Drapeau Blanc [a brothel] saved the life of scores by incapaciting them for future trench service. Base venereal hospitals were always crowded.
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The drafts were now, for the most part, either forcibly enlisted men or wounded men returning; and at this dead season of the year could hardly be expected to feel enthusiastic on their arrival in France.
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We used to boast that our transport animals were the best in France, and our transport men the best horse-thieves.
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We could no longer see the War as one between trade-rivals: its continuance seemed merely a sacrifice of the idealistic young generation to the stupidy and self-protective alarm of the elder.
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Though the quality of the officers had deteriorated from the regimental point of view, their greater efficiency in action amply compensated for their deficiency in manners.
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Our final selection was made by watching the candidates play games, principally rugger and soccer. Those who played rough but not dirty, and had quick reactions, were the sort needed.
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They saw the War as a dispensation of God for restoring France to Catholicism, and told me that the Freemason element in the French Army, represented by General "Papa" Joffre, had now been discredited, and that the present Supreme Command, Foch's, was predominantly Catholic, - an augury, they claimed, of Allied victory.
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Yet in the very next sentence he [Siegfried Sassoon] wrote how mad it made him to think of the countless good men being slaughtered that summer, and all for nothing. The bloody politicians and ditto generals with their cursed incompetent blundering and callous ideas would go on until they tired of it or had got as much kudos as they wanted.
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"... going cheerfully like British soldiers to fight the common foe... some of you perhaps may fall... upholding the magnificent traditions of the Royal Welch Fusiliers..." The draft cheered vigorously; rather too vigorously, I felt - perhaps even ironicaly?
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The embarassments of our wedding-night (Nancy and I being both virgins) were somewhat eased by an air-raid: Zeppelin bombs dropping not far off set the hotel in an uproar.
- - -
The first Spanish influenza epidemic began, and Nancy's mother caught it, but did not want to miss Tony's leave and going to the London theatres with him. So when the doctor came, she took quantities of aspirin, reduced her temperature, and pretended to be all right. But she knew that the ghosts in the mirrors knew the truth. She died in London on July 13th, a few days later.
- - -
The situation must have seemed very strange to the three line-battalion second-lieutenants captured at Mons in 1914, now promoted captains by the death of most of their contemporaries and set free by the terms of the Armistice.
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Whatever hopes we had nursed of an anti-Governamental rising by ex-service men soon faded. Once back in England, they were content with a roof over their heads, civilian food, beer that was at least better than French beer, and enough blankets at night.
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The Treaty of Versailles shocked me; it seemed destined to cause another war some day, yet nobody cared.
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We found the University remarkably quiet. The returned soldiers did not feel tempted to rag about, break windows, get drunk, or have tussles with the police and races with the Proctors' "bulldogs", as in the old days.
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Edmund Blunden, who also had leave to live on Boar's Hill because of gassed lungs, was taking the same course. The War still continued for both of us and we translated everything into trench-warfare terms.
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Pro-German feelings had been increasing. With the War over and the German armies beaten, we could give the German soldier credit for being the most efficient fighting-man in Europe.
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Some undergratuates even insisted tha we had been fighting on the wrong side: our natural enemies were the French.
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My own compulsion-neuroses make it easy for me to notice them in others.
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I also suggested that the men who had died, destroyed as it were by the fall of the Tower of Siloam, were not particularly virtous or particularly wicked, but just average soldiers, and that the survivors should thank God they were alive, and do their best to avoid wars in the future.
Mais:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFuIx2HN20o
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Messines_(1917)
Trechos de The Backwash Of War (1916), de Ellen N. La Motte.
When he could stand it no longer, he fired a revolver up through the roof of his mouth, but he made a mess of it. The ball tore out his left eye, and then lodged somewhere under his skull, so they bundled him into an ambulance and carried him, cursing and screaming, to the nearest field hospital. [...] He was a deserter, and discipline must be maintained. Since he had failed in the job, his life must be saved, he must be nursed back to health, until he was well enough to be stood up against a wall and shot.
- - -
During this commotion, his left eye rolled about loosely upon his cheek, and from his bleeding mouth he shot great clots of stagnant blood, caring not where they fell. One fell upon the immaculate white uniform of the Directrice, and stained her, from breast to shoes. It was disgusting.
- - -
To attempt to kill oneself, when, in these days, it was so easy to die with honour upon the battlefield, was something he [Médecin Major] could not understand.
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It was difficult to get the man under the anæsthetic. Many cans of ether were used, which went to prove that the patient was a drinking man. Whether he had acquired the habit of hard drink before or since the war could not be ascertained.
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Then the Médecin Major did a very skilful operation. He trephined the skull, extracted the bullet that had lodged beneath it, and bound back in place that erratic eye.
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Very many yards of gauze were required, with gauze at so many francs a bolt. Very much ether, very much iodoform, very many bandages - it was an expensive business, considering.
- - -
Here lay Félix, asleep. Poor, querulous, feeble-minded Félix, with a foul fistula, which filled the whole ward with its odour. In one sleeping hand lay his little round mirror, in the other, he clutched his comb. With daylight, he would trim and comb his moustache, his poor, little drooping moustache, and twirl the ends of it.
- - -
His [Hippolyte] dirty, filthy jokes filled the ward, provoking laughter, even from dying Marius.
- - -
"Sales embusqués!" (Dirty cowards) he cried angrily. "How long is it since I have been wounded? Ten hours! For ten hours have I laid there, waiting for you! And then you come to fetch me, only when it is safe! Safe for you! Safe to risk your precious, filthy skins! Safe to come where I have stood for months! Safe to come where for ten hours I have laid, my belly opened by a German shell! Safe! Safe! How brave you are when night has fallen, when it is dark, when it is safe to come for me, ten hours late!"
- - -
An assistant, with heavy, blunt scissors, half cut, half tore the trousers from the man in agony. Clouts of black blood rolled from the wound, then a stream bright and scarlet, which was stopped by a handful of white gauze, retained by tightly wrapped bands. The surgeon raised himself from the task.
"Mon pauvre vieux," he murmured tenderly. "Once more?" and into the supine leg he shot a stream of morphia.
- - -
And all the while the wound in the abdomen gave forth a terrible stench, filling the ward, for he [Marius] had gas gangrene, the odour of which is abominable.
- - -
Marius had been taken to the Salle of the abdominal wounds, and on one side of him lay a man with a fæcal fistula, which smelled atrociously. The man with the fistula, however, had got used to himself, so he complained mightily of Marius. On the other side lay a man who had been shot through the bladder, and the smell of urine was heavy in the air round about. Yet this man had also got used to himself, and he too complained of Marius, and the awful smell of Marius. For Marius had gas gangrene, and gangrene is death, and it was the smell of death that the others complained of.
Two beds farther down, lay a boy of twenty, who had been shot through the liver. Also his hand had been amputated, and for this reason he was to receive the Croix de Guerre. He had performed no special act of bravery, but all mutilés are given the Croix de Guerre, for they will recover and go back to Paris, and in walking about the streets of Paris, with one leg gone, or an arm gone, it is good for the morale of the country that they should have a Croix de Guerre pinned on their breasts.
- - -
Opposite Marius, across the ward, lay a little joyeux. That is to say, a soldier of the Bataillon d'Afrique, which is the criminal regiment of France, in which regiment are placed those men who would otherwise serve sentences in jail. Prisoners are sent to this regiment in peace time, and in time of war, they fight in the trenches as do the others, but with small chance of being decorated. Social rehabilitation is their sole reward, as a rule.
- - -
One morning, very early, the night nurse looked out of the window and saw a little procession making its way out of the gates of the hospital enclosure, going towards the cemetery of the village beyond. First came the priest, carrying a wooden cross that the carpenter had just made. He was chanting something in a minor key, while the sentry at the gates stood at salute. The cortège passed through, numbering a dozen soldiers, four of whom carried the bier on their shoulders. The bier was covered with the glorious tricolour of France. She glanced instinctively back towards Marius. It would be just like that when he died. Then her eyes fell upon a Paris newspaper, lying on her table. There was a column headed, "Nos Héros! Morts aux Champs d'Honneur! La Patrie Reconnaissante." It would be just like that.
- - -
At the end of the summer, they changed the troops in this sector, and the young Zouaves were replaced by old men of forty and forty-five. They looked very much older than this when they were wounded and brought into the hospital, for their hair and beards were often quite white, and besides their wounds, they were often sick from exposure to the cold, winter rains of Flanders.
- - -
Rochard died to-day. He had gas gangrene. His thigh, from knee to buttock, was torn out by a piece of German shell. It was an interesting case, because the infection had developed so quickly. [...] which showed that the Germans were using very poisonous shells. At that field hospital there had been established a surgical school, to which young men, just graduated from medical schools, or old men, graduated long ago from medical schools, were sent to learn how to take care of the wounded.
- - -
The various students came forward and timidly pressed the upper part of the thigh, the remaining part, all that remained of it, with their fingers, and little crackling noises came forth, like bubbles. Also the bacteriologist from another hospital in the region happened to be present, and he made a culture of the material discharged from that wound.
- - -
They could not operate on Rochard and amputate his leg, as they wanted to do. The infection was so high, into the hip, it could not be done. Moreover, Rochard had a fractured skull as well. Another piece of shell had pierced his ear, and broken into his brain, and lodged there. [...] The Médecin Chef took a curette, a little scoop, and scooped away the dead flesh, the dead muscles, the dead nerves, the dead blood-vessels. [...] Afterwards, into the deep, yawning wound, they put many compresses of gauze, soaked in carbolic acid, which acid burned deep into the germs of the gas gangrene, and killed them, and killed much good tissue besides. Then they covered the burning, smoking gauze with absorbent cotton, then with clean, neat bandages.
- - -
And there was a full inch of German shell in Rochard's skull, in his brain somewhere, for the radiographist said so. He was a wonderful radiographist and anatomist, and he worked accurately with a beautiful, expensive machine, given him, or given the field hospital, by Madame Curie.
- - -
No one in the ward was fond of Rochard. He had been there only a few hours. He meant nothing to any one there. He was a dying man, in a field hospital, that was all.
- - -
"My husband," she explained, "has a little estaminet, just outside of Ypres. We have been very fortunate. Only yesterday, of all the long days of the war, of the many days of bombardment, did a shell fall into our kitchen, wounding our son, as you have seen. But we have other children to consider, to provide for. And my husband is making much money at present, selling drink to the English soldiers. I must return to assist him."
- - -
The foremost bearer kicks open the door with his knee, and lets in ahead of him a blast of winter rain, which sets dancing the charts and papers lying on the table, and blows out the alcohol lamp over which the syringe is boiling. Someone bangs the door shut. The unconscious form is loaded on the bed. He is heavy and the bed sags beneath his weight. The brancardiers gather up their red blankets and shuffle off again, leaving cakes of mud and streaks of muddy water on the green linoleum. Outside the guns roar and inside the baracques shake, and again and again the stretcher bearers come into the ward, carrying dying men from the high tables in the operating room.
- - -
Meningitis has set in and it won't be long now, before we'll have another empty bed. Yellow foam flows down his nose, thick yellow foam, bubbles of it, bursting, bubbling yellow foam. It humps up under his nose, up and up, in bubbles, and the bubbles burst and run in turgid streams down upon his shaggy beard. [...] he cried and sobbed all the while the General decorated him, and protested that he did not want to die.
- - -
Pathetic little photographs they were, of common, working-class women, some fat and work-worn, some thin and work-worn, some with stodgy little children grouped about them, some without, but all were practically the same. They were the wives of these men in the beds here.
- - -
There was much talk of home, and much of it was longing, and much of it was pathetic, and much of it was resigned. And always the little, ugly wives, the stupid, ordinary wives, represented home.
- - -
Women can come into the War Zone, on various pretexts, but wives cannot. Wives, it appears, are bad for the morale of the Army. They come with their troubles, to talk of how business is failing, of how things are going to the bad at home, because of the war; of how great the struggle, how bitter the trials and the poverty and hardship. They establish the connecting link between the soldier and his life at home, his life that he is compelled to resign. Letters can be censored and all disquieting, disturbing items cut out, but if a wife is permitted to come to the War Zone, to see her husband, there is no censoring the things she may tell him.
- - -
You speak of the young aviator who was decorated for destroying a Zeppelin single-handed, and in the next breath you add, and he killed himself, a few days later, by attempting to fly when he was drunk.
- - -
These were decent girls at the beginning of the war. But you know women, how they run after men, especially when the men wear uniforms, all gilt buttons and braid. It's not the men's fault that most of the women in the War Zone are ruined. Have you ever watched the village girls when a regiment comes through, or stops for a night or two, en repos, on its way to the Front? Have you seen the girls make fools of themselves over the men? Well, that's why there are so many accessible for the troops. Of course the professional prostitutes from Paris aren't admitted to the War Zone, but the Belgian girls made such fools of themselves, the others weren't needed. [...] they are all ruined and not fit for any decent man to mate with, after the war.
They are pretty dangerous, too, some of these women. They act as spies for the Germans and get a lot of information out of the men, and send it back, somehow, into the German lines.
- - -
Antoine learned that a marvellous operation had been performed upon the boy, known as plastic surgery, that is to say, the rebuilding, out of other parts of the body, of certain features of the face that are missing.
- - -
This surgical triumph was his son. Two very expensive, very good artificial legs lay on the sofa beside the boy. They were nicely jointed and had cost several hundred francs. From the same firm it would also be possible to obtain two very nice artificial arms, light, easily adjustable, well hinged. A hideous flabby heap, called a nose, fashioned by unique skill out of the flesh of his breast, replaced the little snub nose that Antoine remembered. The mouth they had done little with. All the front teeth were gone, but these could doubtless be replaced, in time, by others. Across the lad's forehead was a black silk bandage, which could be removed later, and in his pocket there was an address from which artificial eyes might be purchased. [...] Antoine looked down upon this wreck of his son that lay before him, and the wreck kept begging:
"Kill me, Papa!"
- - -
They dispensed with chloroform and gave him spinal anæsthesia, by injecting something into his spinal canal, between two of the low vertebræ. This completely relieved him of pain, but made him talkative, and when they saw he was conscious like that, it was decided to hold a sheet across the middle of him, so that he could not see what was going on, on the other side of the sheet, below his waist.
- - -
After a short while, however, his remarks grew less coherent, and he seemed to find himself back in the trenches, telephoning. He struggled hard to get the connection, in his mind, over the telephone. [...]
"All right now! It is the good God at the telephone!"
A drop of blood spotted the sheet, a sudden vivid drop which spread rapidly, coming through.
Mais:
http://www.medicalarchives.jhmi.edu/papers/lamotte.html
http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/medicine_and_medical_service
Carlo Salsa, Trincee: la verità oltre ogni "celebrativismo"
"Noi dobbiamo dire che cos'è la guerra, non le chitarrate romanzesche e le favole della storia: ed ecco dunque un contributo alla verità."
Trincee - Confidenze di un Fante è un libro poco conosciuto, tornato alla luce dopo essere stato censurato nel 1924, anno in cui fu per la prima volta pubblicato; la narrazione pacata, ironica e cruda della guerra del Carso - la più tragica e debilitante - non poteva convivere con i miti roboanti proposti dalla retorica fascista. Carlo Salsa, come scrive nell'Introduzione, era consapevole di come la letteratura di guerra fosse giunta ad un punto di saturazione; infinite erano le narrazioni riguardo a questo evento epocale, e l'argomento era ormai una "pratica sdrucita", stomacante, pronta a "far inorridire le belle signore golose di letteratura alla moda".
Nonostante questo, Trincee si staglia immediatamente nella memoria del lettore, consegnando senza alcun filtro l'immagine fisica e morale di quindici mesi trascorsi nel Carso, tra uomini che sembrano inquietanti spaventapasseri o statue di cera pronte a squagliarsi nel fango, giovani fanti resi invisibili da buche buie e sporche in un cimitero di morti insepolti e di sepolti vivi. Lo stile incarna quasi un paradosso: il libro è gelido nelle totalità ma espressionista ed inventivo nella scrittura; il distacco e l'impersonalità, del resto, erano forse gli unici espedienti per poter esprimere una tale galleria di orrori, che non ci risparmia nulla.
Da questa implacabile galleria è opportuno isolare almeno un quadro, ovvero quello del ritorno in Patria del protagonista durante la prima licenza. Salsa giunge a Milano con la divisa logora e un fardello pieno di stracci e si accorge di vagare per la città nello smarrimento più totale, come se vedesse le cose per la prima volta. Eppure, in patria nulla è cambiato; la gente passeggia indifferente per le vie, i teatri annunciano i loro spettacoli, i pescecani si arricchiscono con la guerra e pranzano eleganti nei locali.
Eric J. Leed, in Terra di Nessuno, parla di un fenomeno che accomunò tutti i fanti: la "sentimentalizzazione della Patria"; i soldati, avendo perso qualsiasi punto di riferimento nella realtà alienante della guerra, avevano idealizzato i luoghi e le persone del passato, immaginando il volto della Patria chino su di loro, triste di un dolore empatico. Questa ultima àncora di salvezza si frantuma al contatto con un'Italia indifferente, in cui si conducono affari come al solito e si persegue ogni piacere; gli eroi del fronte si rendono conto di essere superflui in Patria, dove la visione di quei corpi sporchi e dalle vesti lacere provoca anzi una sorta di disgusto; era meglio ammirare gli ufficiali del genio, i generali o i coraggiosi automobilisti, ben vestiti e dall'aria intrepida. I fanti sembravano deboli e malati, troppo lontani dall'idea risorgimentale di guerra combattuta al sole, nello scontro aperto e dinamico di divise lucenti. La guerra moderna, quella statica e immobile, condotta contro un nemico invisibile da soldati nascosti come topi, non poteva essere accettata.
Che cosa farsene, allora, dei Comitati di soccorso, delle Case del soldato, delle bandiere tricolori e delle Associazioni patriottiche, delle cartoline illustrate e delle crocerossine commemoranti il povero soldato che moriva valorosamente per la patria? Che cosa farsene del vittimismo e delle celebrazioni edulcorate? Gli intellettuali del tempo urlavano nascondendosi dietro la comoda facciata delle loro riviste, e non erano diversi da quelli che avevano supportato l'entrata in guerra standosene poi a casa, facendo armare gli altri. Salsa se ne va da Milano quasi sollevato e il titolo del capitolo in cui la vicenda viene raccontata, "Oasi", si mostra ora in tutta la sua amara ironia: l'oasi si rivela un luogo di disillusione piuttosto che di salvezza:
"Portai in me il peso della mia solitudine e una enorme sensazione di vuoto: mi sembrò che la mia vicenda non dovesse essere dissimile da quella di certi zingari gocciolanti di stracci, che trascinano per tutti i paesi le loro baracche sconnesse e che si avventurano per tutte le strade sulle orme di un sogno impossibile."
Carlo Salsa si presenta come un anti-eroe e non ha paura di farlo, nonostante sappia benissimo quale sia la sorte di chi provi ad affermare la verità: "disfattista!" Luigi Santucci, nella Prefazione al libro, scrive come il diario apra il discorso della demitizzazione, dell'esigenza della "verità fuori d'ogni celebrativismo", fornendoci una meditazione che, purtroppo, è più che mai attuale, in quanto la guerra non è mai anacronistica. All'interno del diario, catturando il discorso di alcuni commilitoni, Salsa scolpisce un' immagine profetica e amaramente ironica:
"Qui ci verranno dopo la guerra a fare la gita di ferragosto. E diranno: se c'ero io! Ci saranno i cartelli-rèclame e gli alberghi di lusso! Passeggiate di curiosità come ai musei di storia naturale; e raccatteranno le nostre ossa come portafortuna."
Sono passati cento anni da quando la Grande Guerra è stata combattuta e le commemorazioni per questo centenario, così come avviene durante le varie "giornate della memoria", si sprecano. Si ha la sensazione, tuttavia, che ricordare non basti; prima di celebrare bisognerebbe comprendere, avvicinarsi il più possibile alla verità, o quantomeno provarci. Oggi più che mai, mentre discorsi lacrimevoli prendono il posto di indagini approfondite e spiegazioni chiare per paura di ripercussioni politiche e diplomatiche, sembra opportuno capire che la retorica, in questi casi, non serve ed è anzi corrosiva e fastidiosa.
"D'altra parte, è utile si sappia tutti cos'è la guerra. Abbiamo visto che una guerra non si fa per ragioni idealistiche. Gli idealismi servono soprattutto a guadagnare delle alleanze o cacciare innanzi i soldati. [...] E allora, se la guerra dev'essere una partita di interesse, si sappia cos'è."
Fonte:
http://www.loppure.it/carlo-salsa-trincee-la-verita-oltre-ogni-celebrativismo
Mais:
http://www.educational.rai.it/materiali/file_moduli/50959_635543498470218727.pdf
http://docs.google.com/file/d/1YYScSQ338zCFoODp29hxfwq4al0luy4B
Trechos de Doutor Jivago (1957), de Boris Pasternak.
Há três dias fazia um tempo detestável. Esse era o segundo outono da guerra. Após o sucesso do primeiro ano, começaram os fracassos. O Oitavo Exército de Brusilov, concentrado nos Cárpatos, estava pronto para fazer a travessia e invadir a Hungria, mas em vez disso recuava, impelido pela retirada geral. As tropas libertam Galícia, ocupada desde os primeiros meses das ações militares.
- - -
Em frente ao terraço, aproximando-se da clínica, passou um vagão motorizado com dois reboques. Deles, começaram a retirar os feridos para dentro da clínica.
Nos hospitais de Moscou, superlotados, principalmente depois da Operação Lutskaia, os feridos começaram a ser colocados nas áreas próximas das escadas e nos corredores. A superlotação geral dos hospitais da cidade começou a refletir-se nas condições das maternidades.
- - -
Começaram a chegar suas cartas da frente de combate, mais animadas e menos tristes do que as que vinham quando estava na academia de Omsk. Antipov desejava se destacar para ser agraciado por algum mérito militar, ou por um ferimento leve solicitar uma licença para visitar a família. Surgiu a primeira possibilidade. Depois do recente rompimento da linha de frente, que posteriormente ficou conhecido como Brusilovski, o exército passou ao ataque. As cartas pararam de chegar. No início isso não preocupou Lara. Ela justificava o silêncio de Pacha com o desenvolvimento de ações militares e com a impossibilidade de escrever em plena marcha.
- - -
Por todo o caminho, do lado do horizonte, à esquerda deles, ouviam-se trovoadas e estrondos. Gordon, em toda sua vida, jamais testemunhara um terremoto. Porém, definiu com precisão que as detonações sombrias, distantes e quase imperceptíveis da artilharia inimiga eram comparáveis aos abalos subterrâneos e rumores vulcânicos. Quando anoiteceu, a parte inferior do céu daquele lado explodiu num fogo crepitante e cor-de-rosa, que não se apagou até o amanhecer.
O cocheiro levava Gordon através de aldeias destruídas. Uma parte delas foi abandonada pelos moradores. Em outras, as pessoas abrigavam-se nos porões, bem fundo na terra. As aldeias em ruínas assemelhavam-se a um amontoado de lixo e cascalho que se estendia na mesma linha onde ficavam as casas anteriormente. Os povoados queimados podiam ser observados de uma ponta a outra, como descampados sem vegetação. Sobre as casas destruídas, velhas, vítimas dos incêndios, cada qual em sua própria montanha de cinzas, escavavam algo que a toda hora escondiam em algum lugar e se imaginavam protegidas de olhares alheios, como se ao redor delas estivessem ainda as antigas paredes.
- - -
Naqueles dias, a frente ficou agitada. Ocorriam mudanças repentinas. Na direção do sul da localidade onde estava Gordon, uma de nossas unidades, com um ataque feliz de suas companhias, rompeu as posições reforçadas do inimigo. Desenvolvendo seu combate, o grupo de ataque tomava cada vez mais posições. Atrás do grupo seguiam divisões auxiliares que ampliavam a brecha. Atrasando pouco a pouco, elas ficaram para trás do grupo de vanguarda. Por isso, foram feitos prisioneiros. Nestas circunstâncias, foi preso o sargento Antipov, forçado a entregar sua companhia.
Sobre ele corriam boatos. Uns o consideravam morto, pois teria ficado encoberto pela terra, na cratera aberta por um projétil. Essa versão, transmitida por um seu conhecido, o alferes Galiullin, que pertencia ao mesmo regimento e que, diziam, viu a sua morte pelo binóculo do ponto de observação, quando Antipov partiu para o ataque com seus soldados.
Diante dos olhos de Galiullin, ocorreu o espetáculo costumeiro de uma companhia em ataque. Ela teria de atravessar, a passos rápidos, quase correndo, o campo outonal, coberto pela losna seca e crescida que balançava ao vento e pelo cardo imóvel, espinhoso e erguido para o alto, que separava os dois exércitos. Com atrevimento e bravura, os soldados de ataque deveriam atrair para a luta corpo-a-corpo, ou cobrir de granadas e aniquilar os austríacos, escondidos nas trincheiras opostas. O campo parecia infinito. A terra andava sob seus pés como um pântano movediço. No início, na frente e, depois no meio e junto com todos corria o sargento, balançando o revólver no alto da cabeça, gritando "hurra" com toda sua força e com a boca rasgada até quase as orelhas. Porém, nem ele e nem mesmo os soldados que corriam ao seu redor ouviam-no. A intervalos regulares, os que corriam se jogavam na terra, levantavam-se juntos e reanimados com os gritos corriam adiante. A cada vez, junto com eles, mas de maneira bem diferente, tombavam, como altas árvores derrubadas, soldados atingidos que não levantavam mais.
- Projéteis de longo alcance. Telefonem para a bateria - disse Galiullin ao oficial a seu lado. - Não. Eles agiram corretamente ao levar o fogo para mais distante.
Nesta hora, a tropa em ataque se aproximou do inimigo. O fogo cessou. No silêncio que se estabeleceu, o coração dos que estavam no posto de observação palpitou nítido e forte, parecia que eles estavam lá no lugar de Antipov, levando as pessoas até a trincheira austríaca para, no minuto seguinte, demonstrar as maravilhas da esperteza e valentia. Nesse instante, na frente deles explodiram, um após o outro, dois projéteis alemães de 400mm. Colunas negras de terra e fumaça cobriram o que aconteceu depois.
- Por Alá! Pronto! Acabou a festa! - murmurou Galiullin com os lábios empalidecidos, achando que o sargento e os soldados estavam mortos. O terceiro projétil caiu bem ao lado do posto de observação. Agachados ao máximo no chão, todos se apressaram em sair dali.
Galiullin dormia no mesmo abrigo que Antipov. Quando, no regimento, admitiram a ideia de que ele estava morto e não mais retornaria, confiaram a Galiullin, que conhecia bem Antipov, a guarda de todos os seus pertences para futuramente entregá-los à sua mulher, da qual havia inúmeras fotos entre os objetos pessoais de Antipov.
Voluntário e recém-promovido a sargento, o mecânico Galiullin, filho de Gimazetdin, que era o vigia do prédio de Timerzinski e que num passado não muito distante fora aprendiz de torneiro e apanhava de seu superior Khudoleev, devia sua promoção ao seu antigo carrasco.
Ao se tornar sargento, Galiullin, não se sabe como e sem desejar isso, foi parar em um lugar aconchegante e humilde, numa das guarnições da retaguarda em um lugarejo distante. Lá, ele comandava um grupo de semi-inválidos, com os quais os instrutores-veteranos, tão decrépitos quanto eles, passavam em revista as fileiras esquecidas. Além disso, Galiullin verificava se eles estavam colocando as sentinelas de maneira correta nos depósitos de logística. Era uma vida sem preocupações, nada mais se exigia dele. Foi quando, inesperadamente, com um reforço de velhos voluntários provenientes de Moscou, chegou, para ficar sob suas ordens, Pert Khudoleev, a quem conhecia tão bem.
- Ah, velhos conhecidos! - disse Galiullin, sorrindo carrancudo.
- Sim, senhor - respondeu Khudoleev, batendo continência em posição de sentido.
Mas isso não poderia terminar de maneira tão simples. Logo à primeira falha, o sargento berrou com seu subordinado e, quando lhe pareceu que o soldado não estava olhando para a frente e sim para o lado, em direção indefinida, estalou com um soco seus dentes e mandou-o para o xadrez, deixando-o a pão e água durante dois dias.
Agora, cada movimento de Galiullin tinha cheiro de vingança pelo passado. Mas acertar as contas desta maneira, em condições de subordinação ao cassetete, era um jogo sem perdedores e ignóbil. O que fazer? Ficarem os dois no mesmo local era impossível. Porém, com que argumento e para onde se poderia transferir o soldado da unidade a que fora designado, sem entregá-lo ao batalhão disciplinar? Por outro lado, que motivos poderia inventar Galiullin para solicitar a sua própria transferência? Alegando tédio e inutilidade do serviço na guarnição, Galiullin pediu permissão para ir para a frente de combate. Com isso podia mostrar suas qualidades e quando em outra ação militar demonstrou novos talentos, revelou-se um excelente oficial e em breve foi promovido de sargento a alferes.
- - -
- Está uma tremenda confusão ao redor. Ninguém entende nada. No sul, contornamos pelo flanco ou rompemos as linhas dos alemães em vários locais e, em consequência, dizem que algumas de nossas unidades isoladas ficaram cercadas. No norte, os alemães atravessaram o rio Sventoji, que era considerado intransponível. Essa cavalaria parece um exército em número de efetivos. Eles destroem estradas de ferro e depósitos e, acho, estão armando um cerco contra nós. Veja só que quadro. E você falando de cavalos. Vamos logo, Karptchenko, sirva logo, mexa-se e vá embora. O que temos hoje? Ah, pés de vitela? Maravilha!
- - -
Como sempre, o horizonte flamejava rosado do lado da frente de combate e quando no trovejar regular e incessante do bombardeio ouviam-se golpes mais graves, distintos, e que pareciam deslocar a terra ao longe para os lados, Jivago interrompia a conversa em respeito ao som, fazia uma pausa e dizia:
- É "Berta", o obus alemão de dezesseis polegadas. Pesa mais de sessenta pud o brinquedo. - Depois retomava a conversa, esquecendo-se do que estavam falando.
- Que cheiro é esse que tem a aldeia? - perguntava Gordon. - Percebi desde o primeiro dia. É tão adocicado e repugnante. Parece ser de ratos.
- Ah, sei de que você está falando. É o cânhamo. Tem muito por aqui. A própria planta de cânhamo exala um aroma enjoativo e insuportável de carniça. Além disso, nas regiões de ações militares, quando os mortos caem, ficam lá durante muito tempo sem ser descobertos e começam a se decompor. O cheiro cadavérico é muito comum aqui, é natural. De novo a "Berta". Está ouvindo?
Durante estes dias eles falaram sobre tudo. Gordon sabia o que seu colega pensava da guerra e do espírito da época. Iúri Andreevitch lhe contou com que dificuldade se acostumara à lógica sanguinária do aniquilamento mútuo, à aparência dos feridos, em particular com os horrores de alguns ferimentos de armas mais modernas, aos sobreviventes mutilados, transformados pela técnica atual de combate em pedaços de carne deformados.
- - -
Em uma das macas carregavam um pobre infeliz, terrivelmente desfigurado. Um estilhaço lhe havia destroçado o rosto, transformando em um mingau sangrento sua língua e dentes, mas não o matou. Uma lasca de ferro estava alojada no maxilar, no lugar da bochecha dilacerada. Com um fio de voz nada humano o mutilado emitia gemidos curtos e entrecortados, que podiam ser entendidos como uma súplica para que o matassem e interrompessem seus sofrimentos prolongados e inconcebíveis.
Pareceu à enfermeira que os soldados levemente feridos, que caminhavam ao seu lado, impressionados com os gemidos, queriam retirar com as próprias mãos a horrível lasca de ferro enfiada na bochecha do coitado.
- - -
Acompanhado do grão-duque, Nikolai Nikolaievitch, o czar passou em revista os granadeiros enfileirados. Com cada sílaba de sua saudação tranquila, levantavam-se explosões e ondas de "hurras" tonitruantes, que marulhavam como água agitada nos baldes.
O czar, que sorria timidamente, dava a impressão de ser mais velho e desgastado que nas notas de rublos e moedas. Seu rosto era flácido e um pouco inchado.
- - -
Os alemães romperam a resistência nessa região. A linha de defesa deslocou-se para mais perto da aldeia e se aproximava cada vez mais. [...]
Balas cantavam e assobiavam pelas ruas. Nos cruzamentos que atravessavam as estradas até o campo, via-se como explodiam as granadas, com seus guarda-chuvas de fogo.
- - -
"A desordem e a anarquia no exército continuam. Estão tomando medidas para elevar a disciplina e o espírito de combate entre os soldados."
- Estão ocorrendo combates nas ruas de Petersburgo. As tropas da guarnição de Petersburgo passaram para o lado dos rebeldes. É a Revolução!
Mais:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Yd2PzoF1y8
Trechos de Over The Top (1917), de Arthur Guy Empey.
It was in an office in Jersey City. [...]
The windows were open and a feeling of spring pervaded the air. Through the open windows came the strains of a hurdy-gurdy playing in the street - I DIDN'T RAISE MY BOY TO BE A SOLDIER.
"Lusitania Sunk! American Lives Lost!" - I DIDN'T RAISE MY BOY TO BE A SOLDIER. To us these did not seem to jibe.
The Lieutenant in silence opened one of the lower drawers of his desk and took from it an American flag which he solemnly draped over the war map on the wall.
- - -
"I am sorry that I cannot accept your offer, but I am leaving for England next week," and hung up the receiver.
[...] The trip across was uneventful.
- - -
That night there was a Zeppelin raid, but I didn't see much of it, because the slit in the curtains was too small and I had no desire to make it larger.
- - -
Recruiting posters were everywhere. The one that impressed me most was a life-size picture of Lord Kitchener with his anger pointing directly at me, under the caption of "Your King and Country Need You." No matter which way I turned, the accusing finger followed me. I was an American, in mufti, and had a little American flag in the lapel of my coat. I had no king, and my country had seen fit not to need me, but still that pointing finger made me feel small and ill at ease. I got off the bus to try to dissipate this feeling by mixing with the throng of the sidewalks.
Presently I came to a recruiting office.
- - -
Then I explained to him that I would not sign it without first reading it. I read it over and signed for duration of war. Some of the recruits were lucky. They signed for seven years only.
Then he asked me my birthplace. I answered, "Ogden, Utah."
He said, "Oh yes, just outside of New York?"
[...] Pretty soon I stood before him a proper Tommy Atkins in heavy marching order, feeling like an overloaded camel.
- - -
Tommy generally carries the oil with his rations; it gives the cheese a sort of sardine taste.
Add to this a first-aid pouch and a long ungainly rifle patterned after the Daniel Boone period, and you have an idea of a British soldier in Blighty.
Before leaving for France, this rifle is taken from him and he is issued with a Lee-Enfield short-trench rifle and a ration bag.
In France he receives two gas helmets, a sheep-skin coat, rubber mackintosh, steel helmet, two blankets, tear-shell goggles, a balaclava helmet, gloves, and a tin of anti-frostbite grease which is excellent for greasing the boots. Add to this the weight of his rations, and can you blame Tommy for growling at a twenty kilo route march?
- - -
I was "somewhere in France." [...]
This training consisted of the rudiments of trench warfare. Trenches had been dug, with barbed-wire entanglements, bombing saps, dugouts, observation posts, and machine-gun emplacements. We were given a smattering of trench cooking, sanitation, bomb throwing, reconnoitering, listening posts, constructing and repairing barbed wire, "carrying in" parties, methods used in attack and defense, wiring parties, mass formation, and the procedure for poison-gas attacks.
- - -
Then we started our march up to the line in ten kilo treks. [...]
Our billet was a spacious affair, a large barn on the left side of the road, which had one hundred entrances, ninety-nine for shells, rats, wind, and rain, and the hundredth one for Tommy. I was tired out, and using my shrapnel-proof helmet, (shrapnel proof until a piece of shrapnel hits it), or tin hat, for a pillow, lay down in the straw, and was soon fast asleep.
- - -
From that time on my friends the "cooties" were constantly with me.
The aristocracy of the trenches very seldom call them "cooties," they speak of them as fleas.
To an American, flea means a small insect armed with a bayonet, who is wont to jab it into you and then hop, skip, and jump to the next place to be attacked. There is an advantage in having fleas on you instead of "cooties" in that in one of his extended jumps said flea is liable to land on the fellow next to you; he has the typical energy and push of the American, while the "cootie" has the bull-dog tenacity of the Englishman, he holds on and consolidates or digs in until his meal is finished.
There is no way to get rid of them permanently. No matter how often you bathe, and that is not very often.
- - -
Just imagine it, writing a love letter during a "cootie" hunt; but such is the creed of the trenches.
- - -
Now, just imagine my hard luck. Out of five religions I was unlucky enough to pick the only one where church parade was compulsory!
[...] After church parade we were marched back to our billets, and played football all afternoon.
- - -
Against the horizon we could see numerous observation balloons or "sausages" as they are called.
On the afternoon of the third day's march I witnessed my first aeroplane being shelled. A thrill ran through me and I gazed in awe. The aeroplane was making wide circles in the air, while little puffs of white smoke were bursting all around it. These puffs appeared like tiny balls of cotton while after each burst could be heard a dull "plop."
- - -
Next evening, we took over our sector of the line. In single file we wended our way through a zigzag communication trench, six inches deep with mud. This trench was called "Whiskey Street." On our way up to the front line an occasional flare of bursting shrapnel would light up the sky and we could hear the fragments slapping the ground above us on our right and left. Then a Fritz would traverse back and forth with his "typewriter" or machine gun. The bullets made a sharp cracking noise overhead.
The boy in front of me named Prentice crumpled up without a word. A piece of shell had gone through his shrapnel-proof helmet. I felt sick and weak.
- - -
In this trench there were only two dugouts, and these were used by Lewis and Vickers, machine gunners, so it was the fire step for ours. Pretty soon it started to rain. We put on our "macks," but they were not much protection. The rain trickled down our backs, and it was not long before we were wet and cold.
- - -
Suddenly, the earth seemed to shake and a thunderclap burst in my ears. I opened my eyes, - I was splashed all over with sticky mud, and men were picking themselves up from the bottom of the trench. The parapet on my left had toppled into the trench, completely blocking it with a wall of tossed-up earth. The man on my left lay still. I rubbed the mud from my face, and an awful sight met my gaze - his head was smashed to a pulp, and his steel helmet was full of brains and blood. A German "Minnie" (trench mortar) had exploded in the next traverse.
- - -
[...] put the offending sentry under arrest. The sentry clicked twenty-one days on the wheel, that is, he received twenty-one days' Field Punishment No. I, or "crucifixion," as Tommy terms it.
This consists of being spread-eagled on the wheel of a limber two hours a day for twenty-one days, regardless of the weather. During this period, your rations consist of bully beef, biscuits, and water.
- - -
Tommy is a great cigarette smoker. He smokes under all conditions, except when unconscious or when he is reconnoitering in No Man's Land at night.
- - -
Six loaves of fresh bread, each loaf of a different size, perhaps one out of the six being as flat as a pancake, the result of an Army Service Corps man placing a box of bully beef on it during transportation.
[...] A tin of biscuits, or as Tommy calls them "Jaw-breakers."
[...] Once I tasted trench pudding, but only once.
- - -
His [Tommy] pay is only a shilling a day, twenty-four cents, or a cent an hour. Just imagine, a cent an hour for being under fire, - not much chance of getting rich out there.
- - -
"Well, Yank, they've done me in. I can feel myself going West." His voice was getting fainter and I had to kneel down to get the words. Then he gave me a message to write home to his mother and his sweetheart, and I, like a great big boob, cried like a baby. I was losing my first friend of the trenches.
[...] To get to the cemetery, we had to pass through the little shell-destroyed village, where troops were hurrying to and fro.
As the funeral procession passed, these troops came to the "attention," and smartly saluted the dead.
Poor Pete was receiving the only salute a Private is entitled to "somewhere in France."
[...] On the Western Front there are no coffins, and you are lucky to get a blanket to protect you from the wet and the worms.
- - -
My thoughts generally ran in this channel:
Will I emerge safely from the next attack? If I do, will I skin through the following one, and so on? While your mind is wandering into the future it is likely to be rudely brought to earth by a Tommy interrupting with, "What's good for rheumatism?"
Then you have something else to think of. Will you come out of this war crippled and tied into knots with rheumatism, caused by the wet and mud of trenches and dugouts? You give it up as a bad job and generally saunter over to the nearest estaminet to drown your moody forebodings in a glass of sickening French beer.
- - -
"Over the Top with the Best o' Luck and Give them Hell." The famous phrase of the Western Front. The Jonah phrase of the Western Front.
- - -
The standard bomb used in the British Army is the "Mills." It is about the shape and size of a large lemon. Although not actually a lemon, Fritz insists that it is; perhaps he judges it by the havoc caused by its explosion.
- - -
The average British soldier is not an expert at throwing; it is a new game to him, therefore the Canadians and Americans, who have played baseball from the kindergarten up, take naturally to bomb throwing and excel in this act.
- - -
Cassell had been a telegrapher in civil life and joined up when war was declared. As for me, I knew Morse, learned it at the Signaler's School back in 1910. With an officer in the observation post, we could not carry on the kind of conversation that's usual between two mates, so we used the Morse code.
- - -
We had an orchestra of seven men and seven different instruments. This orchestra was excellent, while they were not playing.
- - -
Tommy plays few card games; the general run never heard of poker, euchre, seven up, or pinochle. They have a game similar to pinochle called "Royal Bezique," but few know how to play it.
- - -
I liked that prisoner, he was a fine fellow, had an Iron Cross, too. I advised him to keep it out of sight, or some Tommy would be sending it home to his girl in Blighty as a souvenir.
- - -
Did you ever see one of the steam shovels at work on the Panama Canal, well, it would look like a hen scratching alongside of a Tommy "digging in" while under fire, you couldn't see daylight through the clouds of dirt from his shovel.
- - -
He was about six feet one, and as strong as an ox. I am five feet five in height, so we looked like Bud Fisher's "Mutt and Jeff" when together.
- - -
Executions are a part of the day's work but the part we hated most of all, I think certainly the saddest.
- - -
No photographs or maps are allowed to leave France, but in this case it appealed to me as a valuable souvenir of the Great War and I managed to smuggle it through.
- - -
On June 24, 1916, at 9:40 in the morning our guns opened up, and hell was let loose. The din was terrific, a constant boom-boom-boom in your ear.
At night the sky was a red glare. Our bombardment had lasted about two hours when Fritz started replying. Although we were sending over ten shells to his one, our casualties were heavy. There was a constant stream of stretchers coming out of the communication trenches and burial parties were a common sight.
In the dugouts the noise of the guns almost hurt. You had the same sensation as when riding on the Subway you enter the tube under the river going to Brooklyn - a sort of pressure on the ear drums, and the ground constantly trembling.
- - -
If you cut a wire improperly, a loud twang will ring out on the night air like the snapping of a banjo string. Perhaps this noise can be heard only for fifty or seventy-five yards, but in Tommy's mind it makes a loud noise in Berlin.
- - -
Then came a flash in front of me, the flare of his rifle - and my head seemed to burst. A bullet had hit me on the left side of my face about half an inch from my eye, smashing the cheek bones. I put my hand to my face and fell forward, biting the ground and kicking my feet. I thought I was dying.
[...] the body of one of my mates. I put my hand on his head, the top of which had been blown off by a bomb. My fingers sank into the hole. I pulled my hand back full of blood and brains, then I went crazy with fear and horror [...]; a bullet caught me on the left shoulder. It did not hurt much, just felt as if someone had punched me in the back, and then my left side went numb. My arm was dangling like a rag. I fell forward in a sitting position. But all fear had left me and I was consumed with rage and cursed the German trenches.
On the right and left of me several soldiers in colored kilts were huddled on the ground, then over came the second wave, also "Jocks."
Then it was taps for me. The lights went out.
- - -
Then I became unconscious. When I woke up I was in an advanced first-aid post.
- - -
I was put into a Ford with three others and away we went for an eighteen-mile ride. Keep out of a Ford when you are wounded; insist on walking, it'll pay you.
- - -
An English girl dressed in khaki was driving the ambulance, while beside her on the seat was a Corporal of the R.A.M.C.
- - -
One afternoon I received a note, through our underground channel, from my female visitor, asking me to attend a party at her house that night. I answered that she could expect me and to meet me at a certain place on the road well known by all patients, and some visitors, as "Over the wall." I told her I would be on hand at seven-thirty.
- - -
The wound in my face had almost healed and I was a horrible-looking sight - the left cheek twisted into a knot, the eye pulled down, and my mouth pointing in a north by northwest direction. I was very down-hearted and could imagine myself during the rest of my life being shunned by all on account of the repulsive scar.
[...] the undertaker squad carried me to the operating room or "pictures," as we called them because of the funny films we see under ether, and the operation was performed. It was a wonderful piece of surgery, and a marvelous success.
- - -
After four months in the hospital, I went before an examining board and was discharged from the service of his Britannic Majesty as "physically unfit for further war service."
Mais:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Webber
http://autoculture.org/?p=4046
Trechos de In Salonica With Our Army (1917), de Harold Lake.
Here is a hill which rises to the north of the small and ugly village of Ambarkoj, which in its turn is twelve miles north of Salonica. [...] Right on the summit I found all that the birds and beasts and sun and storm of Macedonia had left of a man who must have fallen in one of the half-forgotten wars which have troubled the land. There were the scattered bones. Rags of clothing were embedded in the ground. Close at hand a couple of clips of cartridges proved that he had fallen in the midst of his fight. There was the merest remnant of his cap, and there was a button which showed him to have been a Bulgarian. His rifle had been taken away.
[...] It may not appear that there is any connexion between a dead Bulgarian on a little hill three thousand miles away and the war-time price of sugar in England, and yet the connexion exists.
- - -
There does not appear to be any end to the possibilities of Macedonia. Civilized nations spend millions in reclaiming land in far countries, in clearing it of swamps, mosquitoes and malaria, in perfecting systems of drainage and irrigation, and yet here is this rich land, in Europe itself, barren and desolate, given over to thistles and scrub, with the poison of fever haunting every valley, with miserable tracks instead of roads wasted altogether.
- - -
And in addition to being wasted, the country is poisonous. In every low-lying, swampy area the mosquito finds an admirable home prepared; and there arises the problem of malaria.
[...] Even the wildest American millionaire would shrink from working out development schemes in a country compared with which the average South American republic is a model of stable and constitutional government. People have been fighting in and for and about Macedonia from the dawn of history, and so we have it as it is to-day.
- - -
And not food alone, but everything else which an army can possibly require. Guns and ammunition must be brought as a matter of course, but there must be also all clothing, every detail of equipment, tools for every imaginable purpose, materials for putting up wire entanglements there is not enough wood in the country to form the uprights and all sorts of hospital stores. Paper, pens and pencils, books, bacon, baths, soap, candles, tobacco, matches - all such things must be brought across the sea. Galvanized iron, wagons, mules, telephone wire, water buckets and bivouac sheets - every imaginable thing.
The relation between that dead Bulgar and the price of sugar in England is, perhaps, becoming apparent. Because so many ships are busy carrying things to the Salonica army there are the fewer to fetch and carry for the people at home; the traffic of the seas is diverted, and Britain has to put up with the consequences.
- - -
The Bulgar of to-day digs himself excellent trenches from which he must be shelled with heavy guns. To aid him he has all sorts of German guns, brought up along carefully prepared roads to the selected positions. For a defence he has the almost impassable country before him, so that he can deal at leisure with his enemies as they advance to the attack.
- - -
The only point of immediate importance is that their symbolical street is a confounded nuisance to soldiers who have a war to worry about. It was well enough, no doubt, in the days before artillery reigned on the battle-field and hiding carefully behind the corner of a house the soldier shot his less cautious enemy and advanced to the next corner. But it is not at all well now, as any gunner can testify who has tried to take a battery through that serpentine alley.
- - -
Those midday hours when the sun seems determined to burn up all Macedonia. Only the engineer remained behind to light the fuses, and the only victim of the explosions was a sorrowful sheep which seemed to have made a hermitage for itself just above the place where we had been working.
- - -
Supplies - that is the keynote of success for the modern army. As your transport is, so will your victory be. The highest skill; the greatest degree of valour, these will be useless unless the material you require is instantly ready to your hand. Deprive your battery of shells, and you had better destroy the guns before they fall into the hands of the enemy.
These statements are the merest commonplaces of war as it is waged to-day, but to appreciate the full force of them one needs to be sitting at the far end of the Seres road waiting for things to arrive.
- - -
Some day perhaps the full story of the road will be told. [...] Words alone would hardly be able to do it justice, so perhaps the cinematograph might be brought in to assist.
- - -
Last summer the English newspapers were announcing the beginning of a great offensive on the Struma. It would have required several miracles and a few thousand magic carpets to have turned that offensive into anything like the mighty affair which it was to have been in the minds of the innocent and imaginative sub-editors who designed those trumpeting headlines.
- - -
Active service, from the soldier's point of view, is such a queer mixture of the real thing and of that other business which is contemptuously referred to as "peacetime soldiering." Our new armies are not fond of peace-time soldiering. The men put on khaki suits for the purpose of killing Germans, and they find it hard to understand why they should not be allowed to get on with that interesting business.
- - -
If you want to appreciate even a third-rate brass band, go to Macedonia for a few months.
- - -
There was once a man in the camp of some little detached post or other in Macedonia who was so pestered by the chanting of the bull-frogs in a pool close by that he arose at midnight and lobbed a Mills grenade into the middle of the concert.
- - -
There are quite a number of riddles to be solved when troops are moving about Macedonia, and the most constant of them all is that of the water supply. There is plenty of water in the land - in winter there is far too much - but it hides away in the most irritating fashion, and it has a habit of running in undesirable places.
- - -
Higher up in its course that same stream may have rippled through the filth of a Macedonian village. Its water may be loaded with micro-organisms which will do terrible things to the stomach of the soldier and render him useless to the army for months. [...]
Most of us have been too near to dysentery at one time or another since we came to the country.
- - -
When one is young the snail often appears to be an enviable beast. It seems such a jolly idea to wear your house on your back, and to be able to move without difficulty into the next street every time the neighbours start disliking you. It is a pity that we have to grow up and put away childish things. If they only retained that youthful envy of the snail the soldiers of the Salonica armies would be quite happy about the fact that they actually do carry their houses on their backs, but they are adult and disillusioned men, and I did not meet one who was really glad to have realized that dream.
To be sure our houses had little in common with the snug, weather-proof residence of the snail. They consisted simply of bivouac sheets, together with such sticks or other supports. [...] Many things which are supposed to be rainproof lose their reputations when they are exposed to Macedonian storms.
- - -
Going to the war in Macedonia is not an exciting business, because there is so much Macedonia and so little war. [...] "Just think of it!" he said. "I was through some of the hottest of the shows in France in the first year and never got a scratch, and now I get shot while I'm sitting down having tea!"
- - -
In these and other ways we did our best to explain our deep conviction that the A.S.C. had nothing whatever to do with the war, that they were pampered aristocrats who dwelt in luxury and idleness among the jam tins far behind the line, and did nothing all day long but conspire together to rob the poor soldier of his rations. But no one who has been in Macedonia for any length of time is likely to perpetuate those insults, even in jest.
- - -
Those centipedes are perhaps the most loathsome of all. They are so big, so fond of going to sleep in one's bed, and they look so venomous. There is so much squelching as the boot does its work.
- - -
It was not a stone at all, but a large and venerable tortoise who had burrowed under my blankets for a quiet nap.
- - -
So, too, if the glasses show little figures flying from the village below, and some of them crumple up and fall - it does not feel as if the final catastrophe had overtaken some human beings; it is simply that some pawns have been removed from the board. It is all in the game, the fate of those little distant figures, the fate of the men one knows, one's own fate. Those shells bursting around do not stand for the menace of pain and death so much as for tokens of the enemy's failure to be as clever as our men. The gunner is more of a scientist than a warrior, and the emotions he gets out of war are not unlike those which you find in golf or cricket, or any game of skill.
If you wish to get down to the stark realities of war, outpost and patrol work can be recommended. Charging trenches or other positions is all very well for war-frenzy, but the night work is the thing to drive home the sheer facts of conflict and peril and the worth of individual superiority.
- - -
Those are the occasions when the bayonet does some of its deadliest work. Shooting is usually to be avoided, since it gives away so much information and wakes up the artillery, so there is the fierce, quiet struggle in the dark, till the survivors of one side or the other realize that there is nothing for it but to slip away among the shadows.
- - -
There were of course shops in the villages where liquids prejudicial to discipline could be obtained. On the counter of nearly every Macedonian shop you will find three bottles containing Vin Samos, mastic, and cognac.
- - -
There is, of course, nothing to read in the up-country camps except the Balkan News, and such books and papers as may be sent from home. There can be no camp libraries, nor are there any of those distributions of papers and magazines.
- - -
If you see, as I have seen, an entirely illiterate Irishman poring over the Saturday Review it does not mean that ours is the most intellectual army the world has ever known. It only means that he is very bored with the cycle of his thoughts and that printed words, incomprehensible though they may be, are giving him a little blessed relief.
- - -
To go hunting hares with a revolver is quite amusing [...]. A service revolver is a wonderful weapon with a great range, but it takes a crack shot to put a bullet into a retreating hare, and so to hit it, moreover, that the animal shall not be reduced to a shapeless mash of fur and flesh and splinters of bone. But if by some fluke the bullet just chips the head, the prospect for to-morrow's dinner is suddenly and wonderfully improved.
- - -
The letter j in Macedonian names has the force and qualities of y. [...]
No arrangement of letters would do justice to the noises they [people from villages] produce.
- - -
He [average inhabitant of Macedonia] may stand upright for a time to watch the passing of our men, but soon he bends once more to his toil as though the matter did not concern him.
We are in his country well, that is our affair. It is nothing to do with him and he will have nothing to do with us, unless we damage his crops. [...] Of course a certain number of the men of the country have been enrolled in labour battalions or hired to act as muleteers.
- - -
I remember one old woman. Not for a moment did she cease her business of threading tobacco leaves on a piece of string, but all the time she was glaring at us with the deadliest hate, the ugliest, bitterest fury seamed across her old, brown face. She might have been the mother of the man [spy] we sought.
- - -
Every day the companies are lined up and marched off to the doctor's headquarters. There the men pass in single file, and receive each of them five grains of quinine, with a drink of water to wash it down.
- - -
Occasionally the form of it is varied a little and people ask "What are we doing in Salonica?" but the spirit of it is the same. This country is vaguely aware that we have a considerable army at work in Macedonia.
- - -
Mountain warfare is a fascinating game, but when it is carried out - as on active service it must be - under the burden of full equipment with the weight of ammunition and the emergency ration thrown in, it is apt to be exhausting.
- - -
Our troops arrived at Salonica in the autumn in 1915 in time to push up into Serbia and to take part in the retreat of the Serbian army.
- - -
I do not want to ask whether Macedonia should be returned to Greece or left in the hands of some other Power. I have no suggestions to make about boundary lines or treaties after the war.
Mais:
http://www.souvenir-francais-92.org/article-les-jardiniers-de-salonique-69683379.html
http://blog.cwgc.org/discoversalonika/gardenersofsalonika
http://www.amazon.com/Gardeners-Salonika-Macedonian-Campaign-1915/dp/0233957480
And now the war was upon us. [...]
